Monday, March 17, 2008

Statistics

Wayne's been posting the User Data Collector results periodically, and one thing I've noticed is that WTP's XML Editor has seriously moved up in the "rankings" to be just behind the Java editor we all know and love. Luckily I caught myself before starting to chant "we're number two, we're number two!" outloud. Its count still pales in comparison to that of the Java editor, of course, although I do have to wonder what will happen when Ganymede goes out the door. In the spirit of the EclipseCon Face-time Poker game, anyone have odds on the Java Editor keeping its lead through the end of the year? And anyone else think that by trading cards it feels more like Face-time Go Fish?

One thing that the results have brought into focus, for me, is that after discounting the commands in our WTP editors that are inherited from the Platform, the one we have for formatting is the most recorded outside of the Platform and JDT. While statistics can easily be misinterpreted or manipulated by interested parties, it's enough to let me know that the subtle fixes being made to our formatters in WTP 3.0 was worth the time spent. My thanks go out to the contributors who are making it possible, and the folks from the XSL Incubator project for giving us the right kind of nudge.

Lastly, I'm writing all of this from my hotel room at EclipseCon while updating the USB keys for the tutorial I'm giving tomorrow. Although the team hasn't yet completed all of our new APIs or features for this release, there's still a lot of ground to cover in the time alotted. And in a break from tradition, tutorials are free. I think there are few better uses of presenters' time than teaching people who want to learn, and this is fantastic news in that regard. The SSE tutorial's always been comparatively well attended, and although I have no idea whether this change will mean more attendees or not, this may be the best EclipseCon yet.

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About Me

Nitin contributes to the Source Editing and JSDT projects in the Eclipse Web Tools Platform project. He has been known to watch many, many, people in Bugzilla and can often be found "lurking" in Eclipse-related IRC channels.